


The Trail of Salt

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Food, Gen, Niesha (Technomancer) / Amelia Reacher (hinted), Rituals, Team Bonding, Worldbuilding, Zachariah Mancer/Andrew Mancer | Lucky - background relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Niesha's family is here, gathered for a small feast.
Relationships: Dandolo | Merchant Prince & Niesha (Technomancer), Zachariah Mancer & The gang
Kudos: 3
Collections: Hello Earth? This Is Mars...





	The Trail of Salt

Niesha looks at herself in the mirror and tries to fix the pin in her hair, but it keeps slipping out. She takes it out, holds it in her teeth, then opens a box on the table in front of her and, holding her hair up with one hand, brings out a thin chain with small bells. It is a piece for the Carnival—but the occasion deserves it. She braids it into her hair, the bells tinkling at her manipulations, then pins it again and turns to look at her profile. It is perfect.

Niesha doesn’t worry about being late. There are times when you have to hurry, when you have to be precise—but there are events when you have all the time in the world.

She dusts off her azure tunic, checks the chain armlet, then nods to herself and leaves her room.

She feels giddy, feels like skipping down the tiles, like when she was smaller (even though she hadn’t had much opportunities to skip, not before Noctis came after her). Her heart is racing, but it is not the racing of a mission, of danger. It is the good kind.

She trades jokes with the guards on her way, and then leaves the Palace, the sounds of the city enveloping her, welcoming. She traverses to a terrace, hopping down a paved walkway, and smiles, taking in the view: a scattering of cushions and ottomans and carpets on the swept terrace, a parapet covered with shards of colourful glass, a wind chime swaying on a rail running over them (a bigger kindred to the bells in her hair).

And her favourite people.

It’s not _all_ of her family (she would have never thought, would have never hoped that her family would get this big), but it’s the most recent addition.

Andrew of course, is an old friend, and she’s known Phobos for years, though he’s become a close friend only with Zach’s arrival.

Zach, with his gentle tone and attention, and his many questions and his support, his quick hands and his hunger for life. He is sharing an ottoman with Andrew, the two of them inclined towards each other, speaking in low tones, Zach stroking the fingers of Andrew’s left hand, sparks running up and down the wiring.

Niesha is happy for them, for Andrew, glad to see a soft smile lighting up his face, and him running a hand over his head, casting his eyes down in that sweet way of his. There is less anger and bitterness in him and more fluidity in his movements; he is more certain of the world.

Scott is standing by the parapet, studying it and asking questions of Dandolo leaning on it, probably forming a new interesting theory he’s found in the play of colours caught by the glass. Niesha thinks it’s good that Scott is not alone. Being alone is necessary sometimes—but it’s well only when you know there’s someone waiting for you when you are ready to not be alone anymore.

Phobos is engaged in a conversation with Amelia, their heads bent over sheets spread on their laps, covered, from what Niesha can see, in Phobos’s fluid, ornate handwriting in green ink. Discussing his poetry, it seems. He’s been writing more lately, and sharing it more, and Amelia has an ear for rhythm.

Amelia…

Just as Niesha looks at her, she glances up, and Niesha turns away fast, the bells tinkling.

‘Niesha.’

Dandolo turns to her, giving her his full attention, as he does with everyone, and she straightens up when he comes close. They touch their foreheads together, sharing breath, and she closes her eyes, lingering. Then pulls back, basking in his pride and love. Then, she looks at the gathering as Dandolo steps aside, and says, ‘I am _Lodola_ Niesha, daughter of _Paon_ Dandolo, member of _Paon’s_ caravans, the Spymaster of Noctis. I am the guest here, if you please.’

‘We are pleased,’ Dandolo replies.

Of course, all the people present know her (though Zach raises his brows at ‘Spymaster’), but the formulaic greeting is necessary and good. They are a part of Noctis, too, now, part of her family, and she wants them to learn the ways of her family as they have shown their ways to her.

Her heart is beating fast, but it is a good fast.

She picks an embroidered cushion close to Phobos, and Scott sits down, too, while Dandolo remains standing. ‘Everyone has gathered, my friends, so I think we can begin. Do not worry about formalities or the order of events, or the ceremonial air: it is for you as much as it is for us. Noctis has little taste for formalities without the heart in them. We are here to rest and to know each other better and, oh, to have a good conversation over good food.’ He gestures at the small low tables, nothing more than raised trays actually, laden with various Noctian foodstuff.

There are bowls of fruits from the Palatial gardens, Martian and Earthian alike; there are bowls with pickled lichen and a pan with noodles. There are small jars filled with spices, for everyone to choose whatever they want and season however they wish. There are pitchers with juices and pots with tea, giving the air a faint flowery aroma. There is, of course, a bowl of joyfully bright crescents of candied oranges, and there are brickets of the bittersweet marzapan.

The centrepiece, on its own raised tray in a glass bowl, white with a ‘filigree’ pattern so delicate it is impossible to think it was made by human hands, is salt. It is coarse, ground into grains bigger than sand, not universally white, but of all shades of it, from creamy to greyish, from opaque to half-transluscent.

Dandolo sits down, cross-legged, on a cushion, and his arm is long enough that he can reach easily to the bowl with salt (but it is also the arrangement of the tray-tables, that anyone can easily reach to any of them, even though it might be needed to ask others for help and to apologise for disrupting their meal; it is customary to ask so).

‘I am not the eldest here,’ Dandolo says, and Scott lets out an amused snort, ‘but I claim, shall we say, a seniority in Noctian things, so forgive me for taking the lead.’ He scoops a generous handful of the salt, and it spills from under his fingers, to which he pays no heed. On the contrary, he moves his hand between the trays and over the rocky ground under them, spoons and forks and empty bowls prepared for the guests, and the salt spills and spills and pours from his hand seemingly with no end.

‘For the tired,’ he say quietly, gently, ‘and the homeless, for the wandering and the lost, for those in the vessels and on ostrich backs, we call them here: let them return safely and come to our meal and share it with us.’ He takes more salt and lets it spill again. ‘For our friends and our kin, those alive and those whose words are echoes in the canyon: let them sit with us in our minds, as we remember them in our words and our gestures and our deeds. Those who can return, let them return; those who can’t, let them not cry. We are the salt of earth and the wind shifting the sand. We walk in the Shadow.’

As always, it brings a feeling to Niesha, she cannot say what—a silence in unity, even though some of the people gathered here have certainly never participated in this before, haven’t seen the Trail of Salt being painted. But they understand, it is a simple ritual, and she knows: they are her family, too.


End file.
